Chapter 23

“UNCERTAIN—COY”

Mr. Tom Arundel, cheerful and happy-go-lucky, filled with an immense belief in a future which he was sure would somehow shape itself satisfactorily, felt a little hurt, a little surprised, just a little disenchanted.

“I can’t think what’s come over her. She used to be such a ripping little thing, so sweet and good-tempered, and now—why she snaps a chap’s head off the moment he opens his mouth. Goo-law!” said Tom. “Supposing she grows up to be like her aunt—maybe it is in the blood!”

The prospect seemed to overwhelm him for a moment. Certainly of late Marjorie had been uncertain, coy, and very hard to please. Marjorie had suffered, and was suffering. She was contrasting Tom with Hugh, and Hugh with Tom, and it made her heart ache and made her angry with herself for her own previous blindness. And, womanlike, being in a very bad temper with herself, she snapped at the luckless Tom like an ill-conditioned terrier, and he never approached her but that she, metaphorically, bared her pretty white teeth, ready to do battle with him.

“Rum things, girls—never know how to take ’em! She don’t seem like the same,” thought Tom. “I wonder—”

There had been a breeze, a distinct breeze. Perhaps Tom, anxious to propitiate Lady Linden, had been a little more servile than usual. He did not mean to be servile. Alluding to his attitude afterwards to Marjorie, he called it “Pulling the old girl’s leg.” And when Marjorie had turned on him, her eyes had flashed scorn on him, her little body had quivered and shaken with indignation.

“If you think it clever currying favour with aunt by—by crawling to her,” she cried, “then I don’t! If you want to—to keep my respect, you’ll have to act like a man, a man with self-respect! I—I hate to see you cringing to aunt, it makes me detest you. What does it matter if she has money? Do you want her money? Do you want her money more than you want me?”

“Goo-law, old girl, I—”

“Don’t talk to me!” cried Marjorie. “Be a man, or I shall hate you!” And she had left him rubbing his chin thoughtfully, and wondering at the ways of women and of Marjorie Linden in particular.

“Blinking little spitfire, that’s what she is!” he thought. “If she means to grow like the old girl, then—then—Hello, here’s old Alston!”

Hugh could give Tom Arundel a matter of eight years, and therefore Tom regarded him as elderly. “A decent old bird!” was his favourite estimate.

“Hello!” said Hugh. “What’s the matter? Not been rowing, have you? Tom, not rowing with the little girl, eh?”

Hugh’s face was serious, for he had caught a glimpse of Marjorie a while ago hurrying through the garden, and the look on her face had sent him to find Tom.

“Not worrying—her or rowing her?”

“No, goodness knows I haven’t said a word, but she flew at me and bit me!”

“Did what?”

“Metaphorically, of course,” said Tom. “I say, Alston, do you think Marjorie is going to grow like her aunt?”

“Look here,” said Hugh, and he gripped Tom by the shoulder with such strength that Tom was surprised and a little pained. “Look here, I don’t know what Marjorie is going to grow like, but I know this—that she is the sweetest, most tender-hearted, dearest little soul, loyal and true and straight, and because you’ve won her love, my good lad, you ought to go down on your knees and thank Heaven for it. She’s worth ten, fifty, a hundred of you and of me. A good woman—and Marjorie is that—a good woman, I tell you, is better, infinitely better, than the finest man that walks; and you are not that, not by a long way, Tom Arundel. So if you’ve offended the child, go after her. Ask her to forgive you and ask her humbly. You hear me? Ask her deucedly humbly, my lad! And listen to this—if you bring one tear to her eyes, one tear, one little stab to that tender heart of hers, if you—you bring one breath of sorrow and sadness into her life, I’ll break your confounded neck for you! Have you got that, Tom Arundel?”

A final shake that made Tom’s teeth rattle, and Hugh turned and strode away to find Marjorie. Tom Arundel stared after him.

“Well, I—hang me! Hang me if I don’t believe old Alston’s in love with her himself!”

Hugh Alston had meant to run over to Hurst Dormer and see how things were getting on there, and incidentally to collect any letters that might have come for him. But the days passed, and Hugh did not go. Lady Linden required her fat horses for her own purposes. Marjorie’s own little ancient car had developed a serious internal complaint that had put it definitely out of commission, so there was no means of getting to Hurst Dormer unless he walked, or wired to his man to bring over his own car, but Hugh did not trouble to do that. They did not want him there, everything would be all right, so Joan’s letter, with others, was propped up on the mantelpiece in his study and dusted carefully every morning; and Joan watched the post in vain, and with a growing sense of anger and humiliation in her breast.

But of this Hugh knew nothing. He was watching Marjorie and Tom. Somehow his sacrifice did not seem to have brought about the happy results that he had hoped for.

So Hugh, though he had little understanding of women, felt yet that things were not as they should be and as Marjorie of course could not possibly be to blame, it must be Tom Arundel, and to Tom he addressed himself forcibly.

Tom listened resentfully. “Look here, Alston, I don’t know what the lay is,” he said. “I don’t know what’s the matter. I am not conscious of having offended her. If I have, I am sorry—why goo-law, I worship the ground the little thing treads on!”

And Hugh, looking Tom straight in the eyes, knew that he was speaking the truth.

“Good!” he said. “I’m glad to hear it, and she’s worth it!”

“And—and it hurts me, by George it does, Alston,” Tom said, “the way she cuts up rough with me. And now you go for me bald-headed, as if I’d behaved like a pig to her. Why goo-law, man, I’d lie down and let her jump on me. I’d go and drown myself if it would cause her any—any amusement.”

There was a distinct suggestion of tears in the boy’s eyes, and Hugh turned hastily away.

“Marjorie dear,” he was saying a while later, “what’s wrong? Tell me all about it. Tell your old friend Hugh, and see if he can put things right.”

“There is nothing—nothing wrong, Hugh!” Marjorie gasped. “Nothing! Nothing in the world!” And she belied her statement by suddenly sobbing and hiding her face against his shoulder.

“There, there—there!” he said, feeling as awkward as a man must feel when a woman cries to him. He patted her shoulder with the uncomfortable feeling that he was behaving like an idiot.

“It—it is nothing!” she gasped. “Hugh, it is really nothing!”

“Tom’s a good lad, one of the best—clean through and through!”

“Yes, I know he is, and—and oh, I do know it, Hugh, and it isn’t Tom’s fault!”

“Your aunt’s been worrying you?”

“No, it is not that—oh, it is nothing, nothing in the world. It is only that I am a—a—little fool, an ungrateful, silly, little fool!”

And Hugh was frankly puzzled.

“You’re going to be as happy as the day is long, little girl,” he said. “Tom loves you, worships the ground you walk on; I think you’re going to be the happiest girl alive. Dry your tears, dear, and smile as you used to in the old days!” He stooped over her and pressed a kiss on her shining hair; and there came to her a mad, passionate longing to lift her arms and clasp them about his neck and confess all, confess her stupidity and her blindness and her folly.

“It is you—you are the man I love. It is you I want—you all the time!” She longed to say it, but did not, and Hugh Alston never knew.

Hurst Dormer looked empty, and seemed silent and dull after Cornbridge. No place was dull and certainly no place was silent where Lady Linden was, and coming back to Hurst Dormer, Hugh felt as if he was then entering into a desert of solitude and silence.

“Everything has been quite all right,” said Mrs. Morrisey. “The men have got on nicely with their work. Lane has taken advantage of your being away to give the car a thorough overhaul, and—and I think that is all, sir. There are a few letters waiting for you. I’ll get them.”

From whom this letter? Whose hand this? He wondered. He had never seen “Her” writing before, yet instinct told him that this was hers.

Two minutes later Hugh Alston was behaving like a lunatic.

“Mrs. Morrisey! Mrs. Morrisey! When did this letter come?”

“Oh, that one, sir? It came ten days ago—the very day you left, the same evening.”

“Then why—why in the name of Heaven—” he began, and then stopped himself, for he remembered that he had ordered no letters should be sent on.

“I hope it is not important, sir?”

“Important!” he said. “Oh no, not at all, nothing important!” Again he read—

“Because you have placed me in an intolerable position, and have subjected me to insult and annoyance, past all bearing, I ask you to meet me in London at the earliest opportunity...”

At the earliest opportunity! And those words had been written eleven days ago; and she had underscored the word “earliest” three times. Eleven days ago! “I feel I have a right to appeal to you for protection....”

She had written that, an appeal to him, and he had not until now read the written words.

What was she thinking of him? What could she think of his long silence?

He could not blame Mrs. Morrisey. There was only himself to blame, no one else! And there had he been, cooling his heels at Cornbridge and interfering with other folks’ love affairs, and all the time Joan—Joan was perhaps wondering, watching, waiting for the answer that never came.

He wanted to send a frantic telegram; but he did nothing of the kind. He wrote instead.

“I have been away. Only a few minutes ago did your letter reach me. I am at your service in all things. Heaven knows I bitterly regret the annoyance that you have been caused through me. You ask me to meet you in London. Do you not know that I will come most willingly, eagerly. I am writing this on the evening of Tuesday. You should receive my letter on Wednesday, probably in the evening; but in case it may be delayed, I suggest that you meet me in London on Thursday afternoon”—he paused, racking his brain for some suitable meeting place—“at four o’clock, in the Winter Garden of the Empire Hotel. Do not trouble to reply. I shall be there without fail, and shall then be, as I am now, and will ever be,

“Yours to command, “HUGH ALSTON.”

This letter he wrote hurriedly, and raced off with it to catch the post.

Seven, eight, ten days ago since Joan had written that letter, and there had come no reply. The man had ignored her, had treated her with silent contempt. The thought made her face burn, brought a sense of miserable self-abasement to her. She had pleaded to him for help, and he had treated her with silence and contempt.

Well, what did it matter? She hated him. She had always hated him. She laughed aloud and bitterly at her own thoughts. “Yes,” she repeated to herself, “I hate him. I feel nothing but scorn and contempt for him. I am glad he did not answer my letter. I hope that I shall never see him again. If we do meet, by some mischance, then I shall pass him by.”

Several times this morning Helen had looked curiously at Joan. For Helen was in a secret that as yet Joan did not share. It was a little conspiracy, with Helen as the prime mover in it.

“I am sure that there never was anything between Joan and that Hugh Alston. It was some foolish tittle-tattle, some nonsense, probably hatched by that stupid old talkative Lady Linden.”

Two days ago had come a letter for Helen Everard, with an Australian stamp on it. It was from Jessie, her only sister, urging her to come out to her there, reminding her of an old promise to make a home in that distant land with her and her children. And Helen knew she must go. She wanted to go, had always meant to go, for Jessie’s boys were very dear to her. Yet to leave Joan alone in this great house, so utterly alone!

Last night Helen had driven over quietly to Buddesby, and she and Constance had had a long talk.

“I can’t leave Joan alone. I have written to Jessie, telling her that I shall start in three months. I have said nothing to Joan yet; but, Connie, I can’t leave her alone!”

“Helen, do you think she could care for Johnny enough to become his wife?”

“I believe she is fond of him. I will not say that I think she is desperately in love, but she likes him and trusts him, as she must; and so, Connie, I hope it may come about. Joan will make an ideal wife. He is all a woman could wish and hope for, the truest, dearest, straightest man living, and so—Connie—I hope—”

“I will talk to him to-night, and I will suggest that he comes over to-morrow and puts his fate to the test. I know he loves her.”

And to-day Johnny Everard should be here, if he had listened to his sister’s advice, and that was a thing that Johnny ever did, save in the matter of hops.

There was a look of subdued eagerness, of visible nervousness and uncertainty, about Mr. John Everard that day. And Helen saw it.

“Joan’s in the garden, John,” she said.

“Yes, I—” He fumbled nervously with his hands.

“Helen, I have been talking to Con, at least Con’s been talking to me!”

“Yes, dear?”

“And she—she says—Con tells me that there is a chance for me—just a chance, Helen. And, Helen, I don’t want to spoil my chance, if I have one, by rushing in. You understand?”

“I think,” Helen said, “that Joan would like you the better and admire you the more for being brave enough to speak out.”

“That’s it! I’ve got to speak out. You know I love her!”

“I do, dear.”

“But she doesn’t love me. It is not likely; how could she? Look at me, a great ugly chap—how could such a girl care for me?”

“I think any girl might very easily care for you, Johnny!”

“An ugly brute like me? A farmer. I am nothing more, Helen, and—and—”

“Johnny, she is in the garden. Go to her; take your courage in both your hands. Remember—

‘He either fears his fate too much. Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to the touch, To gain or lose it all.’”

“I’ll go!” Johnny Everard said. “I can but lose, eh? That’s the worst that can happen to me—lose. But, by Heaven! if I do lose, it is going to—to hurt, and hurt badly. Helen dear, wish me luck!”

She put both her hands on his broad shoulders and kissed him on the forehead. She felt to him as a mother might.

“From my heart, Johnny, I wish you luck and fortune and happiness,” she said.

Joan was at the far end of the wide, far-spreading garden. She was seated on a bench beside a pool where grew water-lilies, and where in the summer sunshine the dragon-flies skimmed on the placid surface of the green water—water that now and again was broken into a ripple by the quick twist of the tail of one of the fat old carp that lived their humdrum, adventureless years in the quiet depths.

She sat here, chin in hand, grey eyes watching the pool, yet seeing nothing of its beauties, and her thoughts away, away with a man who had insulted her, had brought trouble and shame and anger to her—a man to whom she had appealed, and had appealed in vain; a man dead to all manhood, a man she hated—yes, hated—for often she told herself so, and it must be true.

And then suddenly she heard the fall of a footstep on the soft turf behind her, and, turning, looked into the face of a man whose eyes were filled with love for her.

So for one long moment they looked at one another, and the colour rose in the girl’s cheeks, and into her eyes there came a wistful regret. For she knew why this man was here. She knew what he had to say to her, to ask of her, here by the green pool.